Let's Go Carrolling-ing

Our room turns out to be on the third floor of the mansion, which was once part of a plantation. The room reeks of gentility and romance, but to me, the big bed with a soft white coverlet looks like it was made especially for a nap on a rainy afternoon.

By the time I awake in the late afternoon, the sun is shining on a gorgeous garden, where a wedding party, including two darling flower girls in frilly dresses, is posing for pictures. I head to a swimming pool surrounded by high hedges and find I am sharing poolside with two couples, both of whom had married here some years earlier. A more perfect spot would be hard to find. In fact, as I'm strolling back to the mansion, I see another young couple passing by.

"This is the place," says the young woman. "I want it here." I'm pretty sure she's talking about their wedding.

Later that day, as I head to Maggie's in Westminster for a more modest dinner, I see couples arriving at the hotel for dinner. For a half-hour before they are seated in the dining room, they are served hors d'oeuvres and wine in the mansion parlors. Very romantic and elegant. Dinner includes an intermission; come only with someone you can either gaze into the eyes of or comfortably talk with for an extended period.

We do a quickie dinner that's just so-so, followed by dessert at Baugher's, a combination restaurant-garden shop-farm where you can get homemade pies and cakes and afterward shop for plants and fruit. We stop at another Baugher's location on the way home the next day, before our trail ride, to pick strawberries. Later this summer, you can buy -- or pick and buy -- cherries, plums, nectarines, peaches and, eventually, pumpkins.

We've made an 11 a.m. appointment at the ranch for our trail ride, and arrive to find Lara Forster and Sydonia Rehm waiting to guide us. They saddle up three beautiful horses and a fat pony, and for a moment I fear I'll get the fat pony, Gibbs. Actually, that will be Sydonia's mount; there are more than a dozen other horses to choose from, but she's aiming to get Gibbs slimmed down.

I get Diamond T, and my daughter climbs on Chubby, a quarter horse that isn't chubby anymore, and Lara notes that maybe she should rename him. Lara intends to lead on Flash, but Flash decides he doesn't want to go. Rather than taking him on the trail, Lara decides to teach him a lesson by riding him in the paddock, and Gibbs, despite his excess weight, seems eager to get going.

A relaxing walk is interspersed with trots and an occasional gallop. We learn during the walk that Sydonia boards her own horse at the ranch. She's from Colorado, came to the University of Maryland for a degree in engineering, and decided to stay.

When a Colorado horsewoman finds a spot back East that feels even more like home than home, you know you've found a good spot.